


Just Another Thursday Morning

by circ_bamboo



Category: Captain Marvel (Comics), Marvel 616, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, carolcon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-28
Updated: 2013-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-21 15:33:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/901939
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/circ_bamboo/pseuds/circ_bamboo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Carol would very much like to get some sleep, but there's a herd of wildebeest on the roof keeping her up. Or one very annoyed alpaca.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Just Another Thursday Morning

**Author's Note:**

  * For [lalalalalee](https://archiveofourown.org/users/lalalalalee/gifts).



> Written for the CarolCon Gift Exchange on tumblr. I kind of used a mishmash of 616 and MCU characterizations and canon, and this is set at some random time before The Enemy Within, because reasons. Also it's total and pure crack.
> 
> Most of what I know about alpacas came from [the Wikipedia article](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alpaca).

Carol Danvers was having the strangest dream, involving galloping herds of wildebeest and her neighbor Georgine in the middle of it, dressed like Wonder Woman but with a whip and a chair like a lion tamer instead of a lasso. Georgine was saying, "No, don't eat the azaleas!" which struck Carol as so strange that she woke herself up.

Or something like that. In any case, she woke up; it was around eight-thirty, which was late for the military side of her brain but a little early for the Avengers side of her brain. She'd been out chasing Doom-bots until something like four in the morning, and given a choice she wouldn't be awake yet.

Then she realized she could still hear the wildebeest, if that was what they were--someone or something was tromping around on the roof. There were some great things about having an apartment on the top floor: she had easy access to the roof, which gave her an easy place to land when she was out flying. Also, normally that meant she didn't have to deal with hearing neighbors tromping around above her.

Today, however, not so much. There were--she listened carefully, or as carefully as she could, still half-asleep--at least three people on the roof, and all of them were running.

"Not the crocuses, either! Augh, Mittens, this is not working."

And that was definitely Georgine hollering up there. Carol sighed, thought about rolling over to fall back asleep, and decided it would just be better if she went up to help Georgine with whatever was going on. She swung her legs over the side of the bed and sat up, dislodging a very-disgruntled Chewie from where she'd been sleeping. 

"Merf," said Chewie, and plodded up to sleep on Carol's pillow.

(Which was technically not allowed, but it wasn't worth moving the cat.)

She pulled on the nearest set of clothes; it turned out to be jeans and a t-shirt with the Stark Resilient logo on it, and why on earth did she have a t-shirt with the Stark Resilient logo on it? Obviously it was Tony's fault, like the headache she currently had and the people running on the rooftop and basically everything else wrong right now. Oh well. She threw her jacket on over it, opened the window, and climbed up the fire escape to the roof.

Georgine was indeed on the roof, her curly reddish-black hair visible above the scarf over her ears, but she was the only human on the roof. The other inhabitant was--well, actually Carol wasn't entirely sure. It looked like a smallish llama, with curly brown fur that poofed out around it. It was trying to eat a plant in a pot that she was pretty sure belonged to Mrs. Kaprowicz on the third floor, and Georgine was, by means of a harness around its neck and back, trying to stop it.

"What's going on here?" Carol said, in her best Captain Marvel voice.

Georgine's head flew up and her curls bounced, forming a halo around her face. "Carol!" she said, and dropped the leash attached to the harness. The llama-thing lunged forward and buried its face in the plant. "Mittens, no!"

Carol ran forward, grabbed the end of the leash with one hand and the harness with the other, and wrestled the llama-thing out of the plant; Georgine picked up Mrs. Kaprowicz's plant and moved it on the other side of the picnic bench.

"Thanks," Georgine said, coming over to take the leash from Carol's hands.

"No problem," Carol said. "No, really, what's going on? What is it, a llama?"

"An alpaca," Georgine said, twisting her hand in the leash as she scratched the animal behind its ears. "My mother has a few alpacas on her place upstate, but she sold this one and the buyer couldn't make it all the way up there so I was supposed to do the meetup in New Jersey, but that fell through."

"So you're alpaca-sitting until . . . when, exactly?" Carol didn't have the entire New York City Code memorized but she was reasonably sure that alpacas were illegal to own within the city boundaries, like, well, most animals that weren't dogs, cats, and fish.

Georgine flushed and looked extremely interested in the stitching on the alpaca's harness. "Just until I can figure something out."

Carol sighed. "The alpaca isn't going back to your mother?"

"Her name is Mittens, and no, I--"

Carol held up a hand. "It's fine," she said. "You don't have to justify things to me. I might have a friend who can help--" Or she'd punch a hole in Stark Tower. "--if that's okay?"

"I'll take all the help I can get," Georgine said, relief written across her face. She was fifteen years or so Carol's junior, working nights in a demanding job in a restaurant, and she was doing a damn good job of it, but at that moment she looked very young and very lost.

"Does Mittens have to stay on the roof?" Carol asked. She wasn't really surprised when Georgine nodded.

"I don't think I can get her back down."

_I probably shouldn't call up Tony Stark just to make him get the alpaca off the roof right now, should I._ She sighed again. "Okay. Well. Good luck with keeping her corralled up here."

Georgine nodded. "Yeah," she said. "Thanks!"

Carol sent Tony a text message-- _I need help relocating an alpaca_ \--when she got back to her apartment, and then sent the same message to Pepper, realizing that really, she should have just contacted Pepper in the first place. She looked at her bed, Chewie still aggressively sleeping on her pillow, and then at the ceiling, where Georgine's and Mittens's footsteps were still audible and not exactly quiet.

There was really only one choice here. She loaded up the coffeemaker and turned it on, and then jumped into the shower.

Tony had responded when she got back with, _a what?_ Pepper's response of an address of a local animal sanctuary and the name of the person to contact was a little more useful. She was in the middle of trying to convince her hair to do something a little more organized than 'trainwreck' when her phone rang, and she answered it. "Why can't you sling webs like the other guy?" she said by way of greeting.

Jessica snorted. "His are little contraptions he straps to his wrists," she said. "Too bulky. Why, you need something trapped?"

"Well, it would make things easier," Carol said. "There's an alpaca on the roof."

"There's a what."

It wasn't really a question, but she answered anyway. "An alpaca. It's kind of like a llama, only a little smaller, and for reasons I can't explain, it's on my roof." She headed to the kitchen to retrieve her coffee.

"And here I just called to see if we were still on for lunch," Jessica said lightly.

"We can do lunch, assuming the alpaca situation has been resolved or it's at least in a holding pattern," Carol said, laughing as she poured herself a cup. The footsteps over her head increased in intensity and then subsided. "Can you hear that?"

"What, the thunder?"

Carol looked outside at the perfectly-blue sky, not a cloud in sight. "Or the alpaca running around on the roof. Either."

"Do you really need help with it?" Jessica asked.

"Not yet," Carol said, and paused to take a long drink of the coffee. "As far as I can tell, it--she; her name is Mittens--just wants to--" A loud scream interrupted her, and Carol ran for the window as fast as she could, clothes transforming into her Captain Marvel uniform. "Jess, I might need that help now." She transferred the call over to her earpiece and dropped the phone on her couch as she ran for the window. 

Jumping onto the fire escape, she saw a blur of brown fur fly by, surrounded by a force field of some sort. "Uh-oh."

"What is it?" Jess asked. "Did the alpaca take a bite out of someone? I can be there in five or ten minutes."

"I think I'm going to have to call in everyone," Carol said. "It's--it's flying away."

Jessica groaned. "Okay, that's a problem. You want me to make the call?"

"Yeah, please do." Carol bounced on her toes and then jumped into the air. She flew far enough above the roof to see that Georgine was uninjured and leaning over the edge of the roof, watching the alpaca fly away, and then raced after Mittens.

It was strange enough that the alpaca was flying; even stranger, either her perspective was off or the alpaca was getting _larger_. Mittens was screaming, sort of; a weird braying that kept getting lower in pitch every so often. It might have been the Doppler effect.

It wasn't.

By the time Mittens had flown off in her force field for about five city blocks, Carol had caught up, and the alpaca was roughly the size of a two-story house. She thought about trying to punch the force field, but the image of Georgine's face if the alpaca got hurt stopped her. Okay. Maybe she could redirect her to Central Park, or somewhere where no one would be hurt if the force field suddenly quit, or if the alpaca kept growing in size.

"Huh. So that's what an alpaca is," Iron Man's electronic voice said into her earpiece, and Carol checked her peripheral vision to see him flying next to her.

"You know, for a genius, there sure are a lot of random things you just don't know," she said, as if _she'd_ known what an alpaca was an hour ago.

"Yeah, yeah, unimportant. So, what are its powers, strengths, weaknesses? JARVIS says it's kind of like a llama or camel, so, uh, I don't know, fur?"

"We're not killing her," Carol snapped. "We're not so much as singeing her fur, or so help me, I will punch a hole in your shiny metal abs."

"Whoa, hey, okay, no problem. Operation Alpaca is strictly non-violent. Did you hear that, Cap?"

"I read you, Iron Man. Where are you headed?" Steve Rogers said over the comm.

"I was thinking we could herd it to Central Park, but we might need another flier for that," Carol said. By now, Mittens was almost four stories tall, and her brays were starting to be in the range of a jet engine. It was rather disconcerting.

"Right on your tails, Sparklefists and Shellhead," came Jessica's voice cheerfully, and Carol reached behind her and flipped Jess the bird without even looking. Jessica laughed.

"Well, folks, Central Park is that direction," Tony said, pointing, "so I'll go over there--" He pointed again. "--and see if I can redirect it, without injury or anything, yes, I remember, Captain Marvel, it was about thirty seconds ago that you threatened me, and each of you two can flank me." 

"All right," Carol said. "I'll get left, you can have right, okay, Spider-Woman?"

"Sure," Jessica said. "Uh, I hate to ask stupid questions, but is the alpaca getting bigger?"

"You saw that, too?" Tony said. "JARVIS says it's approximately twenty meters tall, which for the non-scientists, is about sixty-six feet, and he believes its height doubles every five point two six minutes."

"That sounds about right," Carol said. "In that way where it's completely _wrong_ , of course."

"If the alpaca is getting bigger, shouldn't we call Dr. Pym?" said Bruce Banner, over the comms. "We're at the Park, by the way, but I think I'm going to sit this one out."

"Yes, good idea. Someone who is not me get Giant-Man on the line," Tony said, "and preferably over to Central Park. You know what, it's really not all that amenable to herding."

"I'm not surprised," Carol said.

"C'mon, alpaca--what did you say its name was, again?"

"Her name is Mittens," she said.

"C'mon, Mittens, turn to your right . . . Oh, heh, JARVIS says that's funny because alpaca fur is turned into knitted goods," Tony said.

"It's nice that you have a computer to explain jokes to you, Iron Man," Steve said. "Now can we herd Mittens or not?"

"Ow!" Iron Man jerked to one side and then dropped six feet; Carol swerved to go retrieve him, but he regained his position quickly enough. "Well, that force field packs a bit of a punch. Oh, but Mittens turned, about fifteen degrees, J says."

Carol heard Jessica's snort over the comm. "Well, then, do it another five times, Iron Man," she said.

Tony's sigh fuzzed out the comm link for a moment. "If you insist."

After another five touches to the force field, Iron Man was shaking his head like a dog as he bounced in the air, but said, "I suppose I'm going to have to redirect Mittens towards the ground, too?" The alpaca, now over a hundred feet tall, was still hovering a couple hundred feet off the ground.

"Well, I'm not going to," Jessica said.

The other Avengers had cleared out the Sheep Meadow, appropriately enough, and Tony gently nudged the force field until Mittens was floating a few inches above the ground. "Now we gotta pop this bubble."

"Without hurting Mittens."

"Without hurting Mittens, yes, Carol, I think everyone remembers by now."

"Good." Carol landed on the ground near the giant freaking alpaca and looked up at the force field. "Well, I could always punch it. At best, Mittens'll fall six inches."

Jessica fell in next to her and tipped her head to one side. "I can't think of a better solution. Anyone else got one?"

"I could shoot it," Hawkeye said.

"Let's try that second," Carol said. She walked up to the force field, gently bobbing in place, aimed at the rather giant space between the alpaca's feet, and _punched_.

The force field popped with a noise rather like a giant firework; everyone in the vicinity clapped hands to ears but it was a little too late.

"Ow," Jess said weakly, and Carol nodded in agreement. 

She belatedly remembered the reason she was here, and flew up to check on the alpaca, who then noticed her, and--

"So apparently alpacas spit," Jessica said as Carol looked up at her, dazed. "And when a hundred-odd-foot-tall alpaca spits at you, you crash into a tree."

"Guess so," Carol said and rubbed her head.

"Oh well, better you than me," Jessica said, and helped her up.

Hank Pym was there, looking up at the alpaca, who was being held in place by Tony and Thor and Mjolnir (mostly Mjolnir). Pym and Bruce were talking animatedly, but they both looked happy.

Tony came up to them, bobbing in mid-air. "You're fine, right? Hank thinks we can get Mittens down to her original size no problem, and JARVIS has a lead on who did this in the first place. Cap and Spider-Man are going to check it out. Also someone from the Llama and Alpaca Association is coming to see about rehoming her. Do you know whose she is?"

"I'm fine," Carol said. "Yeah. Georgine, in my building, was brokering a sale for her mother. Someone should go get her so she can be here. She was on the roof last I saw her."

"On it," Tony said, and flew off.

"You sure you're okay?" Jessica said, looking worried despite the mask.

"Yeah," Carol said. "Everything's under control, I'm not actually hurt, and most importantly," she said, grinning, "I got to punch a thing."

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Just Another Thursday Morning](https://archiveofourown.org/works/1937304) by [einzwitterion](https://archiveofourown.org/users/einzwitterion/pseuds/einzwitterion)




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